What's your favorite "lesser" Dostoevsky novel? (ie not crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, or Demons).
What's your favorite "lesser" Dostoevsky novel?
What's your favorite "lesser" Dostoevsky novel? (ie not crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, or Demons).
the house of the dead
mostly because its the only one ive read outside of the big five
I love the House of the Dead. It was Tolstoy's favorite Dostoevsky novel. I also really enjoyed Poor Folk and The Double.
1. House of the dead
2. Raw Youth
3. White Nights
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
My dad keeps telling me to read something called Humiliated and Insulted, apparently he read it in his youth and loved it. It's one of Dosto's lesser known works.
Humiliation ritual
Humiliated and Insulted is great, but nowhere near his top five. Still, it’s a great narrative with great characterization, but something about it was a bit lacking. It’s like a Dosto novel without the impassioned moral dilemmas present in his great work. Still, highly recommend it.
>It’s like a Dosto novel without the impassioned moral dilemmas present in his great work
Holy shit Nabby was right:
>venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist
The Gambler was ok. Poor Folk sucks.
If you are alluding to Dostoevsky’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ”sinning their way to Jesus” or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ”spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment’s plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.
So wait. Nabokov hates dosto but likes Kafka?
>As early as 1913, in a letter to his fiance Kafka wrote: "the four men, Grillparzer, Dostoevsky, Kleist and Flaubert, I consider to be my true blood-relations"
Kafka also read his work aloud and laughed hysterically. Also he wanted all of his work destroyed when he died. The fact that you have read any of his work is in direct contradiction of his own wishes.
>Kafka also read his work aloud and laughed hysterically
the sign of a good writer
How long has this copypasta been around?
Since 1969.
The Double is fantastic and it annoys me that Dostoy was mocked for it after his debut being so strong. The Double is both funny, enigmatic, prosaic, cringy and historically significant in my view. I am sure that there are books both before and contemporary to it that dealt with mental health, but The Double is so obviously some kind of proto-portrayal of schizophrenia. The prose is repetative but that is intentional and is characteristic of Golyadkin. I tore through that book in three days because I couldn't let it go, that rarely happens to me. The scene in which Golyadkin debates with himself whether he's to enter the party or not is master class cringe material. Due to me being such a fan of cringe literature (I love the scene in which the underground man paces up and down the little get together with his school fellows) I absolutely love the "A Nasty Story" or whatever it is called. That book isn't merely a critique on the contemporary feeling of historical reform in Tsarist Russia, it is also an acknowledgement that even if a person has the best intentions of crossing class divisions it simply isn't possible unless due to extreme charisma and some kind of intangible appropriateness. Lastly that book doesn't have plot or anything (mostly due to its short length) but manages to provide an engrossing narrative simply because the whole theme is cringe, and cringe is delicious in prose but unbearable in video format.
Have you read Gogol yet? Read the Overcoat if not, very similar.
I have and you're correct about them being similiar. I believe that is a somewhat common criticism of The Double? I really liked it but I am afraid of continuing Gogol since I don't wanna pick a bad book that represents him poorly.
of his lesser novels I've read the gambler, hotd, and the double and the gambler has been my favorite by far. double is also very good, hotd could've been shortened. But the gambler hit hard for me as a former degenerate gambler, and dosto for obvious reasons commanded tremendous understanding with perfect portrayal of such a vice. funny, painful and moving.
"Thirding" House of the Dead
Insulted and Humiliated
The Eternal Husband
Dream of a Ridiculous Man
The Meek One
A Nasty Anecdote
i'm a big fan of The Adolescent
The Gambler.